Yayoi Kusama in one of her mirror rooms, 2004

Yayoi Kusama talks about her mortality

83-year-old artist says "The older I become and the closer death approaches, the brighter my life gets day by day"

 

The Yayoi Kusama retrospective opening at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art on Thursday provides an opportune moment for the Wall Street Journal to interview one of our favourite artists. 

"I think when you say Kusama to some people, they think, 'Pumpkins, pumpkins, gourds, gourds,"' David Kiehl, the Whitney curator overseeing installation of the show tells the WSJ. Kusama's choicest answers in the interview revolve around mortality and her interpretation of her dreams. She reveals: 

"When I was a child, I used to paint intently. The older I become and the closer death approaches, the brighter my life gets day by day. And now I have been intensifying my artwork to prepare for my journey to the dead sea. I am taking every step forward in my life with my brilliant soul in this universe."

The artist adds that she is "putting every effort toward creating works from morning till night on every single day. I have transformed the shadow of my life into this work through sublimating the numerous hallucinations, joy and nihilism that exist in my dreams." Read the whole Yayoi Kusama interview.